Sunday, June 29, 2008

Private takes on the fundies.

Ever heard of Fundie Watch? It's a blog that, as the title hints, examines the toxic hate the fundies write on their various websites. This post was done almost a month ago, but I think it's worth reposting here, as it shows what kind of lunacy exists in the world.

Fundie Thinks Gays Will Cause God to Exterminate the World


As you may have heard, California has ruled that same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and that the gays can get married. Which has the fundies pissed off to no end. After all, what the point of religion if it doesn't give you a theological excuse to hate minorities?*
How same-sex marriage points to end of the world
I guess the “seducing our children” argument was being recognised for the homophobic idiocy it was.
What do May 17, 2004, and May 15, 2008, have in common? One judge and a redefinition of marriage against the will of the people.
Don’t forget May 17, 1954. It may not have involved one judge (being a unanimous vote) but I’m pretty sure most of America was against the Brown v. Board of Education verdict.
Both the Massachusetts Superior Court and the California Supreme Court by a one-judge margin redefined what marriage has always been in every culture and every religion for more than 5,000 years of recorded history.
Really? Every country and every religion? I thought there was something in the Bible about not lying. In parts of Africa and the Middle East, polygamy is common, so there goes your “every culture” argument. Even restricted to the America, it’s only been 41 years since Loving v. Virginia, which legalised interracial marriage. So, actually, Folger, marriage is an evolving and ever-changing concept that differs between cultures.
Why does this matter?
It doesn’t.
As I wrote about in my book, "The Criminalization of Christianity," Jeffrey Satinover, who holds an M.D. from Princeton and doctorates from Yale, MIT and Harvard, was on my radio program one day and I asked him about where we are in history. He explained that according to the "Babylonian Talmud" – the book of rabbis' interpretation of the scriptures 1,000 years before Christ, there was only one time in history that reflects where we are right now. There was only one time in history, according to these writings, where men were given in marriage to men, and women given in marriage to women.
The fact that you wrote a book about Christianity being ‘criminalised’ shows just how much of a psychotic wing-nut you actually are. But, being the nice guy I am, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt with your final sentence.
Want to venture a guess as to when? No, it wasn't in Sodom and Gomorrah, although that was my guess. Homosexuality was rampant there, of course, but according to the Talmud, not homosexual "marriage." What about ancient Greece? Rome? No. Babylon? No again. The one time in history when homosexual "marriage" was practiced was … during the days of Noah. And according to Satinover, that's what the "Babylonian Talmud" attributes as the final straw that led to the Flood.
I knew the benefit of the doubt was a bad idea, Lady, if you’re gonna talk about history, the least you could do would be to TALK ABOUT HISTORY THAT ACTUALLY EXISTED. Came back with some scientific, empirical evidence that a) there was enough water to conceivably flood (almost) the entire planet, b) two of every animal could be systematically collected within a lifetime, c) a ship could also be built within that same lifetime to hold two of such every animal, d) there is enough food (also gathered within this lifetime) to feed these animals for 40 days and 40 nights, e) a dove can physically fly over 30 miles across the sea (the horizon is about 30 miles from where you stand at sea level. That dove must be able to across the horizon to find land and back, assuming it was able to feed and rest), f) this land had the proper environmental conditions to hold two of every animal, and g) that there were no problems with inbreeding. If you can do that, I’ll consider that the story of Noah and his ark might have existed.
On my Faith2Action radio program on Thursday, Rabbi Aryeh Spero verified this to be true.

Rabbi Spero spoke of God's compassion before the Flood, in hopes people would repent and turn back to His ways. He showed patience for hundreds of years.

But, he said, the Talmud's writings reveal that "before the Flood people started to write marriage contracts between men, in other words, homosexual 'marriage,' which is more than homosexual activity – it's giving an official state stamp of approval, a sanctification … of homosexual partnership."
Cite, please. In fact, I’ll allow a biblical reference that says that gay marriage was allowed.
In fact, he said, "the writings indicated that it wasn't even so much the 'straw that broke the camel's back,' but that the sin in and of itself is so contrary to why God created the world, so contrary to the order of God's nature, that God said then and there 'I have to start all over … to annihilate the world and start from the beginning. …'"
So God almost destroyed all of mankind not because of murder or rape, or anything of moral significance. He did it because people were attracted to others of the same sex. Even though this meant killing thousands of innocent people who did nothing wrong (i.e. they could kill and maim, but just not be butt-fuckers and rug-munchers, because that was so much worse), because logically speaking, if the entire world was committing this sin, then humanity would die anyway and God would be wasting his energy. What an asshole.
Rabbi Spero went on to say, "Even in ancient Greece they did not write marriage contracts between men. There was homosexuality, and it was wrong, but there was not an official 'blessed' policy. … Marriage is 'sanctification' (not simply a partnership)." He said to confer the title of sanctification and holiness upon this behavior is "probably one of the greatest sins of all that one does against God's plan for this world."
Yup, we’ve all signed up for ‘God’s plan’ even if we don’t want any part of it. This plan also apparently means exterminating Jews, the genocide in Sudan, tin-pot dictatorships all over the world…I’m seriously struggling with the idea that your God, assuming it exists, has any plan for us.
The one time it happened was: "During the days of Noah." When I first heard this, my mind immediately went to a verse I've heard many times but never with such relevance. The verse is found in Matthew 24:37. It reads:
As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. – Mathew 24:37 (NIV)

I used to read this verse and think: It was bad at lots of points in history; it doesn't necessarily mean now, but if these Jewish writings are true, we are uniquely like the "days of Noah" right now – and only right now.
You still haven’t shown any evidence that gay marriage was around in the days of Noah.
But it can't be yet, you say. You have a lot going on in your life? You're getting married? Here's how the New Living Translation describes that very sentiment in Luke:

When the Son of Man returns, the world will be like the people were in Noah's day. In those days before the Flood, the people enjoyed banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Noah entered his boat, and the flood came to destroy them all. – Luke 17:26-27
Like I said before, people doing nothing wrong but had to die before their loving God anyway.
Happily going about as if everything was fine was what they did, too.

You don't like this possibility? Don't even believe in the Flood? Doesn't matter. Some things are true whether you believe them or not. How can you be sure? There's a way. Did you know that about one-fourth of the Bible is prophecy? A quarter of the Bible is a lot – it's a big book. And did you know God's standard? Perfection. That means that if even one of those prophecies is wrong, you can discount the whole thing. Kind of like a prophet who makes a false prediction – that made him a false prophet and a candidate for stoning. Did you know that 4,000 prophecies in that Bible have already come true down to the last detail? That leaves about 1,000 left to be fulfilled – those are the ones regarding the last days before the return of Christ, which are being checked off the list right now.
“Some things are true whether you believe them or not.” My irony meter didn’t just exploded. It went into a Chernobyl-style meltdown that has contaminated the surrounding area and left no chance of recovery (a good thing too, if I have to keep reading this tripe). But honestly-the last 2/3 of that paragraph is citeless moronic drivel. Any Biblical references to these thousands of prophecies? Any-even one (let alone 4-fricken-thousand)-examples of such prophecies coming true? Of course not. These are fundies.
If 4,000 out of 5,000 prophecies have already occurred exactly as the Bible predicted they would, you might want to pay attention to the rest.
Having learnt my lesson about giving fundies the benefit of the doubt, I won’t this time. I’m calling you for what you are, Folger-full of shit.
The good news is that 1.1 million people across California have signed a petition to bring marriage to a vote of the people through a state constitutional amendment (just like 27 other states have done). And guess what? An amendment to a state constitution trumps even the most out-of-control state judiciary. We'll likely know if these signatures are validated before this tyrannical ruling goes into effect, and I predict they will be since they gathered 400,000 more signatures more than they needed to qualify. Besides, they already voted – eight years ago where more than 61 percent of Californians declared marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Now they just need to turn that same language into a constitutional amendment.
So that means that there’s 1.1 million Californians who are so obsessed with what people consent to do with their private lives that they want to deny such people the right to marry. And yet you call the judiciary “tyrannical”…good thing my irony meter is now dead. It would’ve caused a stroke going off a second time.
I don't live in California, so why am I sounding the alarm? Here's why: But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, and the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at the watchman's hand. – Ezekiel 33:6 I'm praying and working to protect marriage in California (and the rest of the country) not only because I care about marriage, but because I care about civilization. And, if we obey God, he just may spare us from the judgment we deserve.
I looked up Noah on Wikipedia:
“When Noah was six hundred years old**, God, seeing man's wickedness which had become abundant in the earth, was saddened, and decided to send a great deluge to destroy disobedient mankind. But He saw that Noah was a righteous man, and instructed him to build an ark and gather himself and his family. And God said to Noah, "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female." And so the Flood came, and all life was extinguished, except for those who were with Noah, "and the waters prevailed upon the earth for one-hundred and fifty days" until the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. There Noah built an altar to God (the first altar mentioned in the Bible) and made an offering. "And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odour, the Lord said in his heart, 'I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease'.”

So no, Folger. God made it clear that he won’t nearly kill off humanity because of butt-sex. You are either totally ignorant of the Old Testament (which is unlikely, given that fundies ignore what Jesus said about love and compassion and focus on genocide and bigotry of the olde times) or you are lying (much more likely). And if God, assuming he exists, does re-destroy the world, that means that he’s lying. This goes against pretty much everything Jesus said, so out of the three options, I’m going with you being a lying bigot. A bigot and a bully who, out of desperation, has stopped with the “gays seducing our children” argument and has allied herself with the Westboro Church, casting off any hint of Christianity and advocated the notion that gays are the root of all evil. After all, it was the SOLE reason why God destroyed the world, wasn’t it?


*Note: I have nothing against any religious person (except for fundies) and that question was directed solely towards the hardline conservatives who abuse religion to justify their prejudices.
**It also might be a good idea to explain how a human can live at least 600 years thousands of years ago, when old age was 30 years.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

This can't be representitive of Victorian ideological demographics

We had the Second Battle of Wellington today, held at the Fertility Control Clinic. And I noticed a clear problem. I counted how many of us were there, and how many fundies there were; 11 of us...and 60-70 fundies (depending on whether you count children as fundies). As made clear by the title, I am hoping that this isn’t representative of Victoria in general. So advertise the counter-protest to everybody you see (unless they're holding a sign with an aborted foetus, in which case, don't).

And to anybody who still thinks there's something genuinely pro-life about most of the pro-life movement, I'd suggest you read this.

Friday, June 27, 2008

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Don't'ja hate it when you think of a great comment for a blog post, but the post is almost a month old, so you look like a real knob if you put a comment up? Well, I hate it, anyway.
We all remember the Jeeves moment:

[The coalition] accused Kevin Rudd of employing a butler to shine his shoes and lay out his clothes when he is on the road.

But Mr Rudd’s office decried the “cheap political attack”, insisting the staffer was an executive assistant whose primary job was to manage paperwork and schedules.

Victorian Liberal senator Michael Ronaldson demanded of Special Minister of State John Faulkner: “How many working families have a butler?”

To which blogger and GrodsThinker Field Marshal Editor rightly replied:

The man is the Prime fucking Minister of the fucking country for fuck’s sake! If the head of this country’s government didn’t have staff to assist with work and home matters I’d be worried. If Kevin Rudd (or John Howard before him, for that matter) had time to do mail merges in the office or wash dishes at home I’d accuse him of not doing his job properly. Why must we smear as out of touch any person who is not a member of these mythical “working families”, doing it tough and battling to buy groceries?
Tonight as I was swimming, I spontaneously realised that if Rudd didn't have an assistant, we'd be hearing Brendoc's rendition of the Cate Blanchett test:
If Mr. Rudd has time to wash the dishes and walk the dog every night, then he should have time to tell pensioners, when he's forcing them to live on a pittance, why he's refusing to cut the petrol tax.
We know it's true. It's just a darn shame we can't check out the alternate universe where this happened.

UPDATE 6/08/08: From Captain "Hedgehog" Tobias, I've discovered a newspaper that is more right wing then the Herald Sun. I was shocked too.

God knows how his mind functions with all that bigotry

I told you I would to a post on Mr. Nile's brain.

Next up...Steve Fielding!

UPDATE: Having been warned of a possible defamation suit, I have (hopefully) altered the post enough to avoid being sued.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Introducing...Greens Watch-watch!


Ever heard of Greens Watch? Try to imagine the lowest, most contemptible (and quite often just plain bizarre) smear campaign in world history. Every possible dirty tactic against the Greens is used here-jumping to comically implausible alternate futures if Greens policies were implemented (and transforming hyperbole into an art form while they're at it), selectively using news sources to paint the Greens as being Satan incarnate, highly emotional imagery with no relation to the Greens, providing their own captions to photos (and, unsurprisingly, linking said photos to the Greens) and of course, outright lying when it suits them.

Every example I've mentioned will have its own dissection, and exposure for the slimy BS it is.

Their page on Greens' animal policies is a fine example:

One of the more bizarre Greens' Policies is their Animal Policy.

The policy is so extreme, Greenswatch is very suspicious that the Terrorist Funding PETA Extremists ^ are involved in its formulation and will be investigating further for possible links.


The link goes to the PETA website. I entered into the search bar "Greens" and "Bob Brown". "Greens" hits were entirely about green vegetables, whilst "Bob Brown" referred to people with "Bob" or "Brown" in their names. So, predictably enough, the "Greens secretly sympathise with terrorists" smear fell apart*

Moving on:

Banning Leather and Wool

3.1.4. Ending the captivity and killing of animals for the cosmetic and fashion industries, including the use of fur and skin. ^
Leather (skin) and Wool (fur) are products used by almost everyone and banning them is extreme.
I followed the link to the Greens site, and found this:

When I said that GW wasn't above lying, I, well...wasn't lying. BUT: even IF that policy statement was an official Greens policy, it still wouldn't change the fact that
  • there's a difference between wool and fur (one that GW clearly doesn't understand)
  • synthetic fur is available
  • leather and wool isn't being 'banned'. It's simply that in Australia it can't be produced, and instead be imported.
And when I referred to GW's dystopian futures...

If this policy was to be implemented an underground leather and wool blackmarket would develop as people secretly buy and sell their leather and wool. A special police force would have to be developed to enforce the Greens' crazy Wool and Leather prohibition. The Greens are opposed to prohibition of Drugs, but support prohibition of Leather and Wool ?
Except, of course, for the fact that that legal imports and synthetic furs would kill off any chance of an 'underground black market.' Which would in turn negate the need for a specialised police force. Nice try, guys.

Banning Pets

3.3.2. Discouraging impulse buying, by restricting the sale of live companion animals to authorized and regulated breeders. ^
So only breeders can buy animals ? What about the elderly who value the companionship of animals to cure loneliness ?
What about people whose existing pets get pregnant ? Since they can't sell them to anyone they'd have to do it secretly, or dump them. Again there would be pet smuggling rings and a pet blackmarket, with forged breeder licences being sold on the streets. The Greens are opposed to prohibition of Drugs, but support prohibition of Pets?
I checked that link, and to no surprise came with the same result: a policy that doesn't exist.
And by the way, just in case the policy did exist:
  1. The elderly can still buy animals. The policy doesn't mention anything about oldies.
  2. If people's pets did get pregnant, I'd bet my internal organs that legislation would exist that these pets could be sold to professional breeders
  3. "Pet blackmarket"??!!1! What are these guys smoking?
The lunacy becomes even more hysterical in point 3 as GW drops any facade of legitimacy, literally making up a series of random policies without any links or quotes:


  • Ending live animal exports - Why ? It's the same as a farm pen but on a ship
Not what from I'm reading:
Animal charities say that thousands of animals die en route from disease, heat exhaustion, thirst, suffocation, and crush injuries.[1] The National Hog Farmer reports that 420,000 pigs are crippled and 170,000 die each year in the U.S. on the way to the slaughterhouse.[2]
To quote Captain Jeremy (from another context but still accurate nonetheless): They're shameless.
Their final point is equally ludicrous:


This one is interesting:
3.6.1 Ensuring that cruel acts and practices against animals by corporate and private offenders are treated as serious crimes. ^
The Greens think crimes against animals are serious, yet crimes against humans, such as drug crimes, aren't serious at all. Good to see the Greens have their priorities in the right order.
If you thought that the link would go to a non-existent Greens policy, congratulations! What GW is doing here is using a type of logical fallacy-if no contrary information presents itself (in this context, the information that crimes against humans aren't OK), then hurting humans is definitely fine, because the quote doesn't say that hurting people isn't fine. Hope that made sense.

Almost there, and this has to be broken down almost sentence by sentence:


Humans are Animals are Humans

3.6.2. Replacing the status of non-human animals as “property” within current legislation to one of “beings” with recognizable legal rights. ^
The sentence itself is self evidently bizarre. “beings” with recognizable legal rights ?

Policy like this is embarrassingly bad.
Why? At least give me an insanely stupid reason why you think it's "embarrassingly bad."

However there's more - analyse the following sentence closely:
Replacing the status of non-human animals as “property”

'non-human animals' ? Think about it. If they'd left 'non-human' out of the sentence, it would have still made sense ie "Replacing the status of animals.."

So why'd they put it in there ?

Probably because it's accurate: humans
are animals.

Because the Greens believe humans are animals, equal with chickens, cockroaches, grasshoppers and sheep.

The first part is fine...the second part veers off track harder then Alan Stang.

The 'human-animals' here at Greenswatch disagree.

Brown, Nettle, Milne and Siewert would also disagree.

Sentient Animals

2.7 Animal husbandry must respect animals' sentient nature, and maximise their quality of life.

We have enough trouble in maximising the quality of life for all humans, let alone making sure a cow leads a happy and fulfilling life.
Imagine a struggling farmer being jailed for not keeping his pigs content in an air-conditioned sty to the Greens specified 18.27 degrees Celsius.
From wikipedia:

Straw man

A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw man argument" is to describe a position that superficially resembles an opponent's actual view but is easier to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent (for example, deliberately overstating the opponent's position).[1] A straw man argument can be a successful rhetorical technique (that is, it may succeed in persuading people) but it carries little or no real evidential weight, because the opponent's actual argument has not been refuted.[2]

Bingo. You're going to have to use less obvious smear tactics, GW.

It took forever...but it's done. A half-decent examination to what the Greens half to put up with. Don't worry, boys and girls. There is, sadly enough, plenty more where those smears came from and I intend on blowing their digital brains out soon enough.


*A smear that could have been done far better if GW had tried the "the Greens oppose those counter-terrorism measures that give the police to raid your home without you even knowing! Clearly, they support the terrorists" smear. Man, I could do this better then GW.

"A woman having the right to control her own body organs? You cannibalistic baby-eating murderer!!!"

That time of the month is almost upon us. That time where we head to the Fertility Control Clinic...and show HOGPI that bullying women for killing a small clump of cells isn't on. Last time, the GrodsMilitary provided backup to the RWM battalion, AKA the Radical Woman's Movement. We stared daggers at each other, until one plucky young private decided to cross no man's land...

Same deal this Saturday. To my legion of fellow soldiers (OK, maybe just Maddy and Steph), come to the ideological battle. If you can't, see if you can nag a few others into going.

Where: Fertility Control Clinic, 118 Wellington Parade, East Melbourne

When: final Saturday of every month, in this case the 28th of June.

Time: 10am-12pm

The political compass and where I am on it.

Ever heard of the political compass? It's a very cool graph that shows you where you stand on economics (Left or Right) and on social issues (authoritarian and libertarian). In doing so it dispels with the archaic idea of 'Left vs. Right = Commies vs. Fascists' because the idea that social authoritarianism and economic neo-liberalism inherently go together is, frankly, a load of bull (ever seen the LDP?). Because of the way the political compass is designed, we can see that communism and fascism aren't opposites, as communism is an economic model and fascism is a social model. Hence, the classic 'Left vs. Right' graph is fundamentally flawed.

The compass changes this so that the opposite of communism is neo-liberalism, and the opposite of authoritarianism is libertarianism.This is where I stand. Unsurprising, really. The classic 'leftist' of politics (the one that would be the moderate left on the older political scale) and where most other member of the GrodsMilitary would stand. Funnily enough, when I first took the test in yr11, I was either 1 square or 2 squares, on both scales, from being as far-left and far-libertarian as possible. How I've mellowed in my slightly less old age.

With this I could obtain a degree in neuropsychology.

I stumbled on this when I spontaneously image-googled 'liberal brain.' (It's an American picture, for the uninformed. Hence, 'liberal' instead of 'leftist.')

Apparently, liberals are closet Marxists (our opposition to the Vietcong was just a cunning plan to support them instead) and we possess no personal responsibility (as compared to Bush and Howard, who've always taken full responsibility for their actions). And of course, what liberal would function without a 'global warming panic meter' (what would 2,500 scientists know anyway?) and a 'moral relativity gray area' (everybody knows that the world is black and white, just ask Michael Savage!)?

In response, I decided to beat these prats at their own game:

And it isn't a f*cking strawman, either. I'll to a CDP/Fred Nile version sometime later. And yes, I do realise that this would have been much better posted before Howard lost.

Beneath the gloss: and they call us “extreme.”

Initially unable to understand what was so ‘fundie’ about Family First, I embarked on a minor quest to see if they were as 14th century as the rest of the GrodsMilitary thought. I googled them, wikied them, went to their website...

Dear God…they’re all over the place. Hatred of anyone even remotely pro-gays rights, opposed to other cultures alternate to their almighty Judeo-Christian values, these people rival the CDP with their bigotry. They make the CEC look somewhat less like a bunch of tin-foil-hat wearing conspiracy theorists. Brace yourselves, boys and girls…you won’t enjoy this.

This is the article that every FF voter should read: so blatantly homophobic it's a wonder that anyone votes for them. Apparently, this is what Fielding and the FF think:

  1. That discrimination is based on sexuality is absolutely fine (given that that's what they're doing).
  2. That discrimination based on private political beliefs is also fine-it doesn't matter that Warrren it perfectly straight...he still supports the gays. So no preferencing.
  3. A 'family' needs both a mum and dad-which would, according to them, disqualify my auntie and cousins from being a family
  4. Having an affair whilst your wife is pregnant is more pro-family then having an attraction to someone of the same sex.
This homophobia continues:
Ignoring the stupidity of the smear in general, look at the last two (in particular second last) points they make. No, that isn't a joke-the FF really so seem to think that support groups for gay and transgender adolescents counts as "promoting" homosexuality and is an "extreme value". This is literally the sort of stuff I'd expect from Fred Nile.

And it gets even better:

FORMER Queensland MP Pauline Hanson's hopes of re-entering Parliament at the election have been bolstered after a Senate preference deal between her and the Family First party, a move the Democrats have described as morally bankrupt.

The decision by Family First to put Ms Hanson's United Australia Party ahead of Labor, the Democrats and the Greens on its Queensland Senate card overshadowed the party's campaign launch and left leader Senator Steve Fielding struggling to justify siding with her.

A spokeswoman for Family First told The Age there was no serious indication that Ms Hanson could win a Queensland Senate seat and "on that basis Family First preference decisions were based on keeping the Greens and the Democrats out of Parliament".

Family First have placed Ms Hanson 47th out of 65 on their Senate how-to-vote card. Coalition candidates have been placed from 33 to 38 and Labor, Greens and Democrats make up the last 10 places.

...

Senator Fielding said: "You have to preference every single party, you don't have to have things in common with those parties, but you have to preference every single party."

...

Ms Hanson has said that African immigrants were spreading HIV in Australia and called for a moratorium on Muslim immigration.

...

Senator Fielding launched Family First's campaign from an abandoned petrol station at Lower Templestowe yesterday to emphasise the party's key election policy of a 10-cent cut in petrol taxes.

"It is irresponsible not to cut petrol tax … it helps people make ends meet and … puts downward pressure on inflation."

At the rally, attended by about 80 people, the senator warned against the Greens being given the balance of power in the Senate.

"I think most people know that the Greens are extreme. If they really knew that the Greens would have the balance of power, they'd be really concerned about it," Senator Fielding told reporters.

He said the Greens had extreme policies targeted at the mining and timber industries, as well as a drug policy that would encourage a culture of drugs.

"There is a concern about the issue of drugs, and we see when you have a soft policy on drugs in the AFL what problems it can cause. Now the Greens want to see injecting rooms, the Greens want to see heroin medically prescribed. That is a position soft on drugs and it's irresponsible."

The racist twat can't even defend his preferences without dragging out the drug issue. Apparently, the Green's drug policies are more extreme then supporting a politician who demonises every minority under the sun. These three articles are also excellent.

And it still frickin' continues:

TONY JONES: Well, returning now to the potential control of the balance of power in the Senate by the Family First Party.

...

And joining us tonight from Adelaide, the city that is apparently the power base of Family First, the party's chairman, Peter Harris.

...


TONY JONES: It may only be getting picked up by the newspapers, but there does seem to be quite a lot of a religious nature, for example, do you stand by the material put out by one of your candidates, Pastor Danny Nalliah in Victoria, who called on his followers to pull down Satan's strongholds.

They included, along with brothels and gambling places, mosques and temples.

Most Australians would consider that to be an incitement to religious violence.

PETER HARRIS: Oh, absolutely.

And some people would see it that way but we, you know, we last week totally distanced ourself from that situation.

We received a letter from the Islamic Council of Victoria.

We responded to that letter and our position is simply that we totally promote and believe in the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, the freedom of choice.

And I personally contacted the Islamic Council of Victoria and expressed that view and they reflected a sense of relief that Family First wasn't about that.

TONY JONES: So what has happened here, Peter?

Have some nutters gotten on board your bandwagon?

PETER HARRIS: Oh, look we certainly wasn't aware of the material that was out there at the time.

But, look, any party, I mean, this is a party that didn't exist federally a short time ago, and we fielded 125 candidates.

And we're going to have a situation --

We're going to have a situation where you've got some people on both the extreme left and the extreme right of situations.

TONY JONES: Alright.

Here's another one.

There are posters put about the seat of McMillan, in the La Trobe Valley, that said, "A vote for Christian Disarray" -- he was the Labor member before he was voted out -- "is a vote for Satan".

PETER HARRIS: Well I'm not aware of that and certainly the party had no involvement in that situation at all.

TONY JONES: So the party doesn't stand by what some of its candidates are doing, that's what you're saying?

PETER HARRIS: Well, I mean, sometimes people say things that are not supportive of the policy of the party, and so in those situation situations, we step in, we deal with those issues and we move forward.

But certainly if you look at the bulk of our campaign throughout the past six weeks, we've run a very balanced, logical, focused campaign and people voted for us because they didn't accept the extreme right or the extremist allegations that were made against us by a range of groups and media.

It should be noted that Danny was also known for calling Muslims "demons" and that they are trying to take over Australia. It's not so much that Danny made such remarks, but more that FF didn't boot him out of their party, ie that Fielding is content to have such extremists within his party. With views like that, I'm surprised Dan and Steve didn't join the openly Islamophobic CDP.

There you have it; hatred of gays, a refusal to remove such blatantly prejudiced candidates, and what is so scary about the FF is how good they are at covering all of this up. Look through their press releases and press statements-all feel-good, populist “families families families” policies, with little else other then cutting the petrol tax. However, unlike his cohorts in Queensland or NSW, Fielding knows precisely how to run a proper campaign. Fred Nile is openly hates Muslims and the less said about Hanson and racial issues the better, so they will never have a hope of becoming a genuine political force . Unlike them, you’d never suspect of Fielding of being anything other then a populist conservative, which is what makes him such a threatening force.

This made the newspaper?!

From today’s Age:

RACIAL harassment of Africans increased following former immigration minister Kevin Andrews' claims they were engaged in crime and failing to integrate, according to a confidential Immigration Department report.
...

The Immigration Department maintained this was because of an improvement in some African countries and the need to help Iraqis displaced by war and Burmese refugees living in camps on the Thai-Burma border.

...Mr Andrews...claimed, after the fatal bashing of Sudanese refugee Liep Gony, that the refugee intake from places such as Sudan had been cut amid fears that "some groups don't seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian life as quickly as we would hope".

The community update says African community leaders had reacted to the ministerial comments and public debate about the change of intake. "There was widespread unease that public comments encouraged racism."

...

Multicultural Affairs parliamentary secretary Laurie Ferguson said Mr Andrews had caused lasting damage.

"His comments were not only counterproductive in regards to stirring up racism and hostility. It is also now very hard to convince the African community the intake hasn't been reduced to zero," he said.

...

The chairman of the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria, Sam Afra, said the documents obtained by The Age confirmed the group's worst fears. "Some might consider polarising society to be a clever political tactic in the lead-up to an election, but these alarming findings reveal such ploys do not come without a cost," Mr Afra said.

I can imagine the African-Australian community sighing one great collective “Duh!”

I wonder if the Age realises that the whole point of Andrews’ little stir was to redivide the community along ethnic lines again. Tampa was brilliant at that: “teh terr’izts ar cumin! in terh ebil botes! we muzt stops dem!’ (Ignoring the obvious fact that if anyone with a grudge against us were to come into Oz, coming by boat-generating massive media attention-would be the most unsubtle way of doing it) Tampa turned us against asylum seekers/refugees and won Howard the election. Sudagate (my God that was an awful pun) unsuccessfully tried to turn us against the Sudanese, and by extension the Australian black community, when Howard and co. realised that their only chance of winning wasn't just to tar and feather Labor but to find an easy scapegoat to blame for something.

So they waited for the opportunity to make such a statement-that ‘they' aren’t integrating into ‘our’ culture. Therefore, instead of examining the root causes as to why 'they' aren't integrating (such as lack of education or hostility and bigotry from other Australians), we must block the elusive ‘them’ from entering 'our' country. Of course, they waited and nothing happened. Hilali didn't say anything dramatic that could be blamed on Muslims, there was no Cronulla riots...it was almost mid-October, with a month and a half before the looming election, and there was still no 'other' for the Libs to divide the rednecks against. So, grasping at straws, Andrews used an example of a Sudanese being bashed to death by white racists to justify the Sudanese not 'integrating.'

I just love the fact that we didn’t fall for it this time...if still somewhat annoyed that something so blatantly obvious made the paper.

Teh Baebeez!!1!!!!!11!

Ah...abortion. The social issue in which the Right wingers' brain cells melt in a runny slime and they become a mass of rabid moronic bigots, unable to comprehend anything other then "youleftistsarekillinginnocentbabies*youwillallburninhellnodontshowme
anyinformationaboutillegalabortionsijustwannaprotectthebabies!!!!!" No offence to any more moderate Righties, by the way. But sadly, abortion, in Victoria, in the 21st century, is still only legal if the mother's life is in serious danger if she gives birth. Thankfully, this might change as Brumby is willing to decriminalise it in a conscience vote.

With a name like 'Helpers of God's Precious Infants' (from now on known as HOGPI), take a wild stab in the dark as to where these fellows stand on the debate. These Christians are the sort of people who'd make Randall Terry proud, intimidating and bullying women who wish to have an abortion. I'm no Christian, but I recall a certain passage about not being a judgmental asshole.

That's where the GrodsArmy comes in. We, inspired by surviving soldiers of previous battles with HOGPI, have now begun the monthly task of protesting against HOGPI on the last Saturday of every month. A short film (filmed by a hung over FM Editor) as well as a funnier version of this post by Capt Lefty are also available.

During the battle, I decided to see if any common ground could be found between us, as I tried to sell fundraising chocolates to support building a school and hospital in Zimbabwe. Needless to say, they were quite uninterested (although that may have had something to do with a) me not being loud enough and b) being interrupted by the police several seconds into the attempt).

However, despite this minor setback, the rally was very successful. We were able to keep the fundies to the opposite side of the clinic, and it was clear that they weren't willing to use their more bullying tactics (such as waving signs of bloody fetuses in the air), instead praying and holding up a statue of a tall hominid creature that was supposed to be either Mary or Jesus. Lt. Keri thought it was Mary holding Jesus, the Captain thought it was Jesus holding himself in a time paradox, and I say it was both; a transsexual Jesus-turned-Mary that had given birth to himself.

For more information on these protests, email General Bron at general_bron@hotmail.com.

*Babies, of course, being small clumps of cellular matter with more biological relations to an amoeba then to a complex human being.

In the beginning...

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and anybody and everybody in between...welcome to my blog, '☮ is my religion'! For the record, yes, I am a fan of Ziggy Marley and Prince, and yes, the title is a blatant rip off from their albums.

But who am I? I am a mere soldier, enlisted in GrodsCorp Military Force to work on the front lines of peace and social progression. In fact, just last week, I crossed no man's land to engage the enemy on their home grounds. With chocolate. (More on that to be posted shortly.)

New email...new blog

This is actually my second blog. When I realised that it's a bad idea running your blog and facebook on the same email address, I created a new email for this blog. The original one is here. For you convenience, all of the posts from DGS have been reposted here, almost entirely unchanged. Enjoy!